Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Charities, between rhetoric and reality

The problem that is shown in this report is that Charities that provide public services are unwilling to speak out in behalf of social injustice, because they are afraid of challenging the governmental policies, because could be reprisals like losing their funding.

The huge cuts in public funding make that the voluntary sector have to struggle with censoring their public utterances, so they couldn’t have reprisals from local authorities and central government funders. Then, they couldn’t have to chose between help the client group or been able to speak out on their behalf.

This organizations need to know that if they make some critics or present some challenges to the government policies will not be a reprisals, said the panel which includes several of the voluntary sector's most respected names. Also, they said that some Conservatives are beginning to question the right of charities funded by the state to speak out against government policies.

The shadow charities minister, Gareth Thomas said that (prime minister) David Cameron's “big society” agenda was an illusion and these reports emphasize the breach between rhetoric and reality for community groups and charities of big funding cuts, job losses and lack of independence.

In this way, the chair of the Independence Panel, Dame Anne Owers, said that government of all political parties have emphasize the importance of Charities, but more than an out of focus appreciation for a “big society”. They need to recognize this sector in a real way: its independence, uniqueness and ability to speak out from experience.